#and theres my harpy girl and her son

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i need more variety of relationships in my ocs, most of them are either besties, worsties, or like. coworkers. i barely even have any ocs with siblings

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Daenerys as an anti-Cinderella?

Another asoiaf/fairy tales meta

It’s always fun to wonder which fairy tales goes best with which asoiaf characters (especially the girls, for some reason). For Sansa and Arya, the references are overflowing. With Dany it’s… trickier. Only two – or maybe three – classic tales really fit. Two of those I’ve already talked about in previous posts (Thumbelina and The Fire Bird). There are some general “clues” pointing to Cinderella…

-Viserys, the Anastasia & Drizella duo to Daenerys’s Cinderella

-In ADWD, Cleon the “butcher king” of Astapor make a marriage offer to Daenerys and gift her with a pair of slippers, but

Irri slid the slippers onto Dany’s feet. They were gilded leather, decorated with green freshwater pearls. Does the butcher king believe a pair of pretty slippers will win my hand? “King Cleon is most generous. You may thank him for his lovely gift.” Lovely, but made for a child. Dany had small feet, yet the pointed slippers mashed her toes together.

-Cinderella is named as such for her habit of retreating close to the ashes-filled hearth once her work is done (from “cendres”, the French word for “ashes”). Bettelheim view Cinderella’s behavior as a product of sorrow and grief for her dead mother. For Dany, ash is also linked with sorrow and, first inverted trope, with the mother mourning her dead child:

She could feel the heat inside her, a terrible burning in her womb. Her son was tall and proud, with Drogo’s copper skin and her own silver-gold hair, violet eyes shaped like almonds. And he smiled for her and began to lift his hand toward hers, but when he opened his mouth the fire poured out. She saw his heart burning through his chest, and in an instant he was gone, consumed like a moth by a candle, turned to ash. She wept for her child, the promise of a sweet mouth on her breast, but her tears turned to steam as they touched her skin. – Daenerys, AGOT

There’s also the “Queen of ashes” nickname Dany is sometime dubbed with (more so in the show) and the fact that Cinderella herself is a “queen” of the ashes, somewhat (hence why she’s called “Cinderella”).

-Mirri Maz Duur is an inverted fairy godmother to Dany.

But these are details. Overall, Dany comes off as the anti-Cinderella of asoiaf. This becomes especially apparent in ADWD, where she’s, essentially, a glorified slave to her duties who dreams of escapes with her “prince charming”, i.e. Daario. This all reach a culmination point when she goes to the “ball”, i.e., the grand reopening of the Daznak’s pit. Unlike Cinderella, who’d give anything to attend the ball, Dany would give anything to skip it:

“Even if the pits must open, must Your Grace go yourself?” asked Missandei as she was washing the queen’s hair.

[…]

She would rather have drifted in the fragrant pool all day, eating iced fruit off silver trays and dreaming of a house with a red door, but a queen belongs to her people, not to herself. – Daenerys, ADWD

Whereas the ball meant dreams and freedom for Cinderella, for Dany, it’s the perpetuation of a nightmare. They both present themselves at the event under a veil: a literal one for Dany,

“And over it, the long red veils.” The veils would keep the wind from blowing sand into her mouth. And the red will hide any blood spatters. – Daenerys, ADWD

A metaphorical one for Cinderella, garbed so elegantly that her step mother and half sisters don’t recognize her. This idea of disguise is interesting. For a start, it contrasts with Dany’s refusal to put a veil between herself and Astapor in ASOS. To borrow Clapton’s words on Dany’s white garments in the show, the purpose of the veil is to “remove herself (Dany)” from the situation. Dany’s choice of clothes is a mean of non-attendance, while Cinderella’s costume allows her to go incognito and enjoy the moment. There is the contrasts of colors: Cinderella wears an immaculate, pure white dress (at least in the Disney version), whereas Dany wears yellow silk and a blood-colored veil. Finally, in some versions, the ball attended by Cinderella is a masked ball. This could be significant, since the reopening of the pits prove to be its own kind of masked “ball” (and even more so in the show, where the sons of the Harpy creep inside the pits wearing literal masks):

At the base of the Great Pyramid, Ser Barristan awaited them beside an ornate open palanquin, surrounded by Brazen Beasts. Ser Grandfather, Dany thought. Despite his age, he looked tall and handsome in the armor that she’d given him. “I would be happier if you had Unsullied guards about you today, Your Grace,” the old knight said, as Hizdahr went to greet his cousin. “Half of these Brazen Beasts are untried freedmen.” And the other half are Meereenese of doubtful loyalty, he left unsaid. Selmy mistrusted all the Meereenese, even shavepates.

“And untried they shall remain unless we try them.”

“A mask can hide many things, Your Grace. Is the man behind the owl mask the same owl who guarded you yesterday and the day before?

How can we know?”

“How should Meereen ever come to trust the Brazen Beasts if I do not? There are good brave men beneath those masks. I put my life into their hands.” - Daenerys, ADWD

Behind the drum marched Brazen Beasts four abreast. Some carried cudgels, others staves; all wore pleated skirts, leathern sandals, and patchwork cloaks sewn from squares of many colors to echo the many-colored bricks of Meereen. Their masks gleamed in the sun: boars and bulls, hawks and herons, lions and tigers and bears, fork-tongued serpents and hideous basilisks. – Daenerys, ADWD

In fact, some descriptions of the event, when taken by themselves, almost make it sound like there’s an actual ball happening inside the pit:

Across the pit the Graces sat in flowing robes of many colors, clustered around the austere figure of Galazza Galare, who alone amongst them wore the green. – Daenerys, ADWD

We could even dig further: dancing, in asoiaf, is often used as a euphemism for dying, or is used in scenes going heavy on the death-related subtext. What do people do in a ball? They dance. What do people do in the pits? They die.

“Barsena is very quick,” Reznak said. “She will dance with the boar, Magnificence, and slice him when he passes near her. He will be awash in blood before he falls, you shall see.” – Daenerys, ADWD

Cinderella’s ball is a dream and Dany’s “ball” is a nightmare, but both are woken from it, for the twelfth stroke of midnight will lift the charm. Fun fact, if I’m not mistaken, there were twelve fights planned that day: Khrazz, the Spotted Cat, a “Lysene youth with long blond hair”, an elephant, a bull, a mock battle, a folly with dwarfs, Barsena, a folly with old women and “three more matches”, according to Hzdahr… yup, that makes twelve. Each fight is a “stroke of midnight” for Dany, pulling her from the nightmare, urging her to wake up. At Barsena, she snaps. The charm falls, her carriage turns into a pumpkin and her gown into rags:

She lifted her veil and let it flutter away. She took her tokar off as well. The pearls rattled softly against one another as she unwound the silk.

“Khaleesi? ” Irri asked. “What are you doing?”

“Taking off my floppy ears.” – Daenerys, ADWD

In her haste to flee, she loses a shoe:

“Let me go!” Dany twisted from his grasp. The world seemed to slow as she cleared the parapet. When she landed in the pit she lost a sandal. Running, she could feel the sand between her toes, hot and rough. Ser Barristan was calling after her. – Daenerys, ADWD

The aftermath finds her alone in the grass sea, wearing literal rags (again, not unlike Cinderella), in a dream-like state and wondering what just happened. Unlike Cinderella, Dany has no desire to relive the ball and would much rather stay where she is, with her rags and her animal companion. Both girls experience an unpleasant return to reality. Cinderella must go back to being a slave to her step-mother and half-sister, while Dany knows she must go back to Meereen (which doesn’t quite work out, but).  

Yet for everything nightmarish about it, the reopening of the fighting pits meant something Dany deeply dreamed for and desired: peace. No more bloodshed in the streets of Meereen. The safety of her people. She wanted it and she got it, until the whole farce blew up in her face and the pit of Daznak turned into a pumpkin. I think that’s when she realized it: that the peace was never real, that Hizdahr’s “peace” was an illusion (as many before me have pointed out), a veil that got lifted with the twelve death blows of the pit.